Monday, April 26, 2010

Be Pro-CACAH!

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are responsible for a lot of twisted shit. In fact, they have proven to me time and again that they go 11, and my tolerance for calloused satire only goes to 10. Some examples:

When Satan has intercourse with Saddam Hussein;

When Cartman contracts AIDS and injects Kyle with it;

When they kill Strawberry Shortcake; and

When they wrote and filmed 90% of Team America:World Police.

To be sure, nary a celebrity, cause, political stance or religious belief has been spared from their merciless magnifying glass. But until last week, never once had they dared to cross the line of Muslim extremists.

That's right. Last week, the prophet Muhammed appeared on their show.

Granted, he was dressed completely in a bear suit. But he was there, because he announces himself as such in the show.

Except that Comedy Central bleeped the muther-bleeping bleep out of the episode becuase a group of Muslim extremists began making threats on Parker + Stone's lives if they dared go where only slain Danish cartoonists have dared to go.

Although I'm no prude by any stretch, much of what these two guys do offends me. Half the time I keep watching anyway, and half the time I just avoid it because I feel better about myself when I make the effort to avoid pointlessly cruel mockery.

But now we have a moment where I'm forced to take their side and support them.

It's one thing to be offended. It's one thing to protest, or to enact laws, or to call the po-po. But when a group of wacked-out fundamentalists decide that God or Allah has enabled them the right to be judge, jury and executioner on the lives of people guilty only of drawing, on a damn computer, a bear, and adding a voice-over of someone claiming to be Muhammed from inside that bear costume? Well, that kinda pushes me into the South Park Support Network.Or, as hilarious columnist Dan Savage decided to call it, the "Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor (CACAH, pronounced ca-ca)".

Savage has declared May 20, 2010, as the first-annual Everybody Draw Muhammed Day:

In light of recent "veiled" (ha!) threats aimed at the creators of the television show South park (for depicting the prophet Mohammed in a bear suit) by bloggers on Revolution Muslim's website, we hearby (sic) deem May 20, 2010 as the first annual Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

Do your part to both water down the pool of targets and, yeah, defend a little something our country is famous for (but maybe not for long? Comedy Central cooperated with the terrorists and pulled the episode): the First Ammendment

Unless I fear for my employment -- which, ironically, is a bigger concern than the fear for my very life -- I will participate in EDM Day. I will draw something and add myself to the untold number of people who stand up to this kind of crap.

Here in the 21st Century, in a culture where few things seem worth fighting for anymore, there's a little something known as freedom of speech, and we can make a pretty powerful collective statement defending it by doing nothing more than spending a few minutes of time in our own homes and posting pictures like this.

And here's what I guarantee you: even if Dan Savage was kidding about that day (which he wasn't, I don't think), and even if only a few thousand people participate (the numbers will be much higher, I think), it will be an awe-inspiring moment for the rights of offensive and tasteless comedy over the forces of thought-control and extremism.

And if they come kill me? Screw 'em. It's after the series finale of LOST, so I can die a happy man anyway.

Or I'll just lie and say Bob did it.

Please note that I'm still trying to figure out which of the five ways I've seen it is the most acceptable way to spell the name of the prophet in question. I can't tell whether people intentionally misspell it to try and avoid extremist wrath and violence, or if there's multiple options, or if no one really knows how to spell it.

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